I enjoy Anne Hill. I don’t know that anyone else would be able to unpack a phrase as loaded as “the art of changing consciousness at will” in such a sane manner. But she has, and has also determined that magic is a way of living, on top of being a right-good paradox, and I do agree, oh yes, I do.
~Amoret
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| Today, I want to feel that I’m blossoming. |
“Knowing how you actually want to feel is the most potent form of clarity that you can have. Generating those feelings is the most powerfully creative thing you can do with your life.” ~ Danielle LaPorte, from “Session 3: The Strategy of Desire,” The Fire Starter Sessions
So how do you want to feel today? Pick out one feeling, write it down, draw it, put it up in a place where you can see the words or the image. Put it over your computer or on your refrigerator or on your bathroom mirror.
Put your desire in your line of sight.
Now identify one thing you can do today to generate that feeling…one small thing.
Last step: go do that one small thing. I dare you.
Boiling down years of work of trying this and this into a weekend of useful effective tools and techniques requires a lot of thinking. Pulling out "things that worked for me" from the "things that usually work for all" is an exercise in self-reflection. Amoret and I have good solid plan and are filling in the details. It is coming together faster than I thought it would and rounding up really nicely to be a powerful intensive. I am so excited for this!
It is a bootcamp and asses will be kicked! W00t!
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“Quit resisting your greater good…Dare to trust the bigger plan. Open your heart wider. Allow grace to flow through you and out into service. You were not put here to be cowed by circumstance.” ~ Cash Peters
On another journal a discussion was rounding out about crime and people committing them being more rather than less poor, younger rather than older, non-white rather than white, etc. One commenter rather eloquently spoke about it. I wanted to share it because I believe it is worth reading and just sitting with it for a bit.
She started with a Terry Pratchett quote and then added her why’s.
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no subject
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| My point being (I realise I hadn’t actually put that in there) that one of the things which leads to a lot of crimes being committed by the less well off rather than the more well off is the more well off are the ones who are generally defining what crime is. Nobody thinks of themselves as criminal, therefore the things which are done by the well-off which harm people and property aren’t necessarily crimes. In the spirit of the above: encouraging people to take on financial risks beyond their ability to repay, destroying the ownership trails of numerous mortgages, and damn near wrecking the global economy aren’t crimes. Being a victim of a shonky salesman who sold you an underwater mortgage you couldn’t afford, or having your home foreclosed on you by a bank you didn’t even know you were in debt to, or being bankrupted by the global financial crisis – those lead to you being treated as a criminal.
There’s a similar argument to be advanced with regards to race: owning slaves in pre-emancipation America wasn’t a crime. Being a slave just about was. Being descended from former slaves still is largely treated as being a crime. Dispossessing the indigenous inhabitants of a continent isn’t a crime. Being descended from the dispossessors isn’t a crime. Being descended from the dispossessees, now THAT is very nearly a crime. |
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When things get really tight in my life I start to fall back on old bad habits, the kind that die hard. Why is that? Why do I not fall back on the old good habits? So, partly based on work we did in coven last night, partly based on self-reflection surrounding what’s in my head recently and how it’s moving in relation to some stressful pieces of my life I made a change. I actively consciously chose to revisit old good habits. For me that was spending time with my Kuan Yin altar and getting my zen on. Nothing brings me back to the person I most like to be than Kuan Yin, how and when she showed up for me, and what she represents.
Good day today. *smile*
And here is a quick not so great photo of my altar. Poor Ganesh got his head chopped off by the crappy photographer.
WHAT: Bloggers’ Silent Poetry Reading
WHEN: Anytime tomorrow, February 2 (or today February 1st!)
WHERE: Your Blog
WHY: To celebrate Imbolc, the Feast of Brigid, or, if you prefer, Groundhog Day.
HOW: Post a poem, one of yours or someone else’s, on your blog, anytime February 2. If you do, link back here in the comments (or on the Facebook page if you like), so we can keep track of the web. This gets bigger and bigger every year.
My contribution:
Creations
Hard to think Spring
with snow and wind chill.
Fires do burn
within us and without,
flames of inspiration
searing bones
and pen tips
and eyelashes.
Words flow from the Well
while fires gird loins.
We Are Creator.
Blessed Brigid.
~Pamela V Jones Feb. 2013
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This past weekend was another trip to Baltimore for a spiritual intensive. The focus in this one was the Black Heart of Innocence. It is a testament to the quality of my covenmates that when one of them taught the black heart to me it stuck in a way that will never leave me and an individual sentence reverberated truth and was so straight forward that I will use it in my teachings. I’d post it here, but w/o context of the black heart work it wouldn’t make much sense.
The intensive I went to was more on the softer side of the BHoI. Not in a bad way just in a larger group, mixed levels of experience, and some new and newer people there which changes the energy a bit. I traveled with one of my covenmates and we had a good time with points of growth opened for both of us. The people down there are sane and wonderful to work with so the lack of sleep and days recovery time were more than worth it. I felt truly honored to be invited to participate in this work.
Here at home we’re going to work The Desire Map by Danielle Laporte in coven this year. That should be fabulous! I ordered the ebook of The Fire Starter sessions and I expect fabulous stuff there, also. I’m still committed to making art and I’ll be fabric and bead shopping soon to create a piece that deals with the black heart as it relates to me.
Still working, part-time barely. Recommitting to treating my body better so it will last me in veritable health through the waning years. I’ve begun that by listening to it again and giving it what it needs. Which is giving me what I need. Sleeping when the body says to. Eating when the body cues me. My body’s schedule of the schedule of society or convenience. I didn’t realize how far off kilter I’d gone until this past weekend. Returning to center.
Lora and I will be teaching a weekend intensive this Spring. I’ll give details as we’re closer.
So. Busy.
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I commit to trying to change that.
I’ll eat all the healthy foods!!! And sit on my ass.
I’ll do all the exercises!!! And eat the cookies.
I’ll do all the spiritual stuff!!! And leave my art to sit.
I’ll read all the books!!! And the pen and paper (or pixels and keys) are idle.
I waste a shitton of time. I really do. I think I need a timer until I get into a good habit of doing the things I love interspersed with the things that will make me well. I’m irritating me with my procrastination. I am all for lazy here and there, but I feel like a slug in general and pulling up out of this rut has been much more difficult than in times past. *grump*
So I’m putting this out there as a public commitment and maybe that will be my push. xxxxfingersxxxx
My New Year is just a couple of weeks away and funny – this looks like resolution list.
So be it.
Today I dusted upstairs and vacuumed upstairs and downstairs. I ran to the grocery for rice for dinner. I made turkey and wild rice casserole which is ready to bake for later. I made a chocolate chip pan cookie. All the dishes are washed that do not have food in them. It is only 3:30 p.m. my time so I have proven to myself that I do indeed have time for many more things in a day than I usually do. Look, I even wrote a blog post! Now, to get back up off my ass and stretch and work on my art. :p
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Sure it does. It may however not count as Daily Spiritual Practice (DSP). Perhaps it depends on who shows up on your newsfeed there. I have some pretty decent friends who post some wondrously deep articles, graphics and posts. Farming them out of the humongous heap of political angst and LOLcats can be a bit hard. (Except I secretly think Ceiling Cat counts.)
DSP is something I’ve struggled with over the years. I waivered between, "I am on this thing!" and, "How long has it been?" Lots of people want to know how to start a DSP and stick with it. Others are fearful they haven’t picked the right thing, or it isn’t complicated enough. Sometimes the concern is that it has become rote and therefore meaningless. Here are my answers: How you start is unimportant, starting it – any it – is the thing. There is no wrong thing and complexity is a non-issue unless you make it one. At times rote is the most important thing.
These are all good answers. These answers were all unhelpful as I tried to develop a DSP that worked for me. I suffer from easy boredom syndrome. Any DSP was going to become the bane of my existence. I thought perhaps <font scary voice of the Gods>That Was My Lesson </ font>, to learn to tolerate monotony. I tried really really hard to learn that lesson as I was moving toward initiation. One of my challenges was a DSP that involved quieting the mind in meditation. I thought it was the perfect time to conquer this boredom beast.
I was wrong. You see, it wasn’t just boredom I was fighting. I don’t like being told what to do even when it is me doing the telling. I don’t like unmovable boundaries. I feel as if I am suffocating with them. I need flexibility to breathe deeply. I need change to stay engaged. I attempted (after this grand realization that I Was Doing It Wrong™) to mix it up by doing one thing for a month, then another. Didn’t work. I kept "forgetting". I shortened it to a week of this and then a week of that. This worked a little bit better, but consistency was still not my virtue.
Then I learned what I’d been trying to teach myself all along. Rules are stupid. I’d learned this as a kid and forgotten it as an adult. Now I hear you making noise about some rules and some times and some situations and yeah yeah blah blah I get it. Arbitrary rules however are always, well, arbitrary. That had been my trap. My purpose (my purpose, not necessarily your purpose) of a DSP is to stay engaged. Engaged with my body, engaged with this reality, fully feeling this incarnation while allowing my spirit to explore beyond it, tethered and not. Once I understood my purpose the rest was easy. I simply do _whatever_ on any given day. My DSP varies: dance with attention to how intricately the body parts work together, running the Iron Pentacle, lighting incense and feeling the smell in my core, quiet mind while stretching, lucid dreaming, tarot pull, singing, etc. ad nauseum.
So there ya have it. How I conquered the Daily Spiritual Practice block. Like I said, I found my purpose and the rest was easy. (I didn’t say always consistent, but one can’t have everything.) And "easy" is a relative term. It became easier. Which for me counts the same. Once I figured out what my block actually was and that it wasn’t what I was doing, but how I was doing it I slid into a routine that stuck.
So that is what worked for me. Perhaps it will work for you. Or not. The beauty of it is that it doesn’t really matter if you hold to a daily practice. What matters is that you puzzle out what is most useful to you, for you, and go from there. And know that "most useful" is a changeable thing, sometimes daily so. I find that to be the best part.
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Bone and Briar 
2013-02-07 05:56 pm (local)
"He hadn’t had much experience with the rich and powerful. Coppers didn’t, as a rule. It wasn’t that they were less prone to commit crimes, it was just that the crimes they committed tended to be so far above the normal level of criminality that they were beyond the reach of men with bad boots and rusting mail. Owning a hundred slum properties wasn’t a crime, although living in one was, almost. Being an Assassin – the Guild never actually said so, but an important qualification was being the son or daughter of a gentleman – wasn’t a crime. If you had enough money, you could hardly commit crimes at all. You just perpetrated amusing little peccadilloes." (Pratchett, 1994, 115-116)
Pratchett, Terry (1994). Men At Arms. Corgi Books, Ealing, London, UK.